News 20170802 - XMM-Newton

XMM-Newton-NEWS

Contents:

• XMM-Newton Users Handbook update for AO-17
• Version 16.1 of the Science Analysis System (SAS) released
• XSAv9.6 release including pipeline products for Solar System targets generated in their rest frame
• Documentation updated:
  RGS Calibration Status and XMM-Newton Background documents
• XMM-Newton Users' Group:
  Minutes of meeting and presentations available
• Optical Monitor Event on Revolution 3224
• The X-ray Universe 2017:
  Presentations and posters on-line

XMM-Newton Users Handbook update for AO-17

The XMM-Newton Users Handbook (UHB) has been updated to version 2.15 in preparation for the next Announcement of Opportunity (AO-17) which will open next 22^nd of August.

The UHB contains information on the instrumentation on board XMM-Newton and serves as the main technical support document for proposal preparation, based on which potential XMM-Newton users can assess the technical feasibility of their planned observations.

The XMM-Newton Users Handbook is on-line at

Alternatively, pdf and postscript versions of the UHB can be downloaded from the "XMM-Newton Proposer's Info and Manuals" portal:

Version 16.1 of the Science Analysis System (SAS) released

The XMM-Newton SAS team announces the release of a new sub-version of the SAS: SAS v16.1. This version is necessary for correcting some SAS v16.0 issues related to source detection that are detailed below.

• eboxdetect: correction of a bug introduced with SASv16.0 that made some obvious sources to be missing in the EPIC source lists of a few observations.
• emldetect: reduction of the number of spurious detections, and solution to the problem of missing valid detections close to chip gaps or very far off-axis.
• especget: improvement of the performance for large background regions.
• eimageget: solved a problem with tangential plane projections in large images.
• eimagecombine: significant reduction of the usage of disk space through compression of intermediate files.

This version of SAS is released in two 64-bit binary versions for Linux (RHEL 6.8 and Ubuntu 16), and two for Mac OS X (El Capitan and Sierra). The versions released have been tested to run correctly on several other platforms.

Binaries are available at

The Pipeline Processing System (PPS) has been migrated to be based on SAS v16.1, see

Pipeline products that were generated with the previous PPS version (based on SAS v16.0) have been reprocessed, ingested in the science archive and Principal Investigators notified.

XSAv9.6 release including
Pipeline products for Solar System targets generated in their rest frame

A new version of the XMM-Newton Science Archive, XSAv9.6, is available at

This release includes, among other improvements, the postcards generated for Finding Charts and Spectra of EPIC PPS sources.

XSA now provides an option to download PPS products of moving targets, i.e. Solar System objects, generated in their rest frame coordinates, in parallel to the standard PPS products of these observations. Such products are being generated for the most recently observed Solar System objects, and will be generated subsequently for older observations of moving targets.

Documentation updated:
RGS Calibration Status and XMM-Newton Background documents

New versions of the following documents have been released:

• RGS Calibration Status
  available from the XMM-Newton Calibration Portal:
       https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/calibration
• The Behaviour of the XMM-Newton Background
  available from the XMM-Newton Background Analysis page:
       https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/background

XMM-Newton Users' Group:
Minutes of meeting and presentations available

The XMM-Newton Users' Group met on the 11^th and 12^th of May 2017 at ESAC. The minutes of the meeting, together with the presentations, can be found at

Optical Monitor Event on Revolution 3224

On July 16 and 17, during a Jupiter observation, two OM exposures were performed with the V filter instead of the Blocked filter. This was due to an operational error during the observation preparation. The main consequence is some damage on the detector area exposed to Jupiter light. First evaluation shows a 15-20 % sensitivity depletion patch of approx 76 x 38 arcsec2, centred 40 arcsec offset from the nominal boresight direction in the -Yaxis direction. The impact on point sources on-axis is considered negligible at the time of writing this note.

Scientific observations are continuing normally with XMM-Newton, including OM. The evolution of the OM patch is being monitored and an update on the photometry calibration for targets in the patch and potential impact for targets on-axis is also under work.

The X-ray Universe 2017:
Presentations and posters on-line

The contributions to the symposium "The X-ray Universe 2017", held in Rome from 6^th to 9^th of June 2017, are available at the conference web page:

Yours sincerely,

XMM-Newton SOC